Trauma Comes in Many Shapes – lessons from Spokane

Trauma. Over the past two days I have been thinking a lot about trauma.

This week, I went to Spokane, Washington to speak at the Southside Community Center. I was welcomed on Wednesday evening by a crowd of 210. They listened and absorbed the stories of Sam and Esther Goldberg and a few of the miraculous things that happened to me during my research and writing process. It was a fantastic event with meaningful and interesting questions. I was moved by the crowd and by the response to my presentation. I want to thank Lynn Terry and her amazing team of volunteers.

During the question and answer period, we discussed the lingering signs of trauma that Esther and Sam exhibited. Then someone mentioned the importance of speaking about the Holocaust in schools. Assuring them that speaking in schools is part of my mission, I mentioned that I would be speaking at Freeman High School the following day. A hush fell over the crowd and then a solitary, brave sole, raised her hand.

“You should know,” she said, “Freeman High School had a shooting there in 2017. They are suffering from their own trauma.”

“Yes, thank you,” I answered, “I am aware of the shooting.”

I had looked up this tragedy before leaving Seattle, to remind myself what type of school shooting it was (sad statement that we have so many that I cannot recall which was which!). I was reminded that a student who was angry at being bullied and who knows what else, brought a gun to school and shot and killed one student, Sam Strahan, and injured many more.

Then, Thursday (yesterday), I drove 30 minutes out of Spokane into the “valley.” Ten minutes into my drive, I found myself on a road empty of cars, barren of houses, with only a few farms that sporadically appeared – as if out of nowhere. This is the definition of rural Washington. I was following my GPS, of course, and as I got closer to Freeman High School, I wondered how there could be a school here in the middle of nowhere. But then the school came into view on the right side of the road – a large, beautiful brick building emerged in the barren landscape. I turned right into the driveway and easily found a place to park.

I pulled up the parking brake in my rented green Subaru Forester and got out the car. As I walked down the pathway towards the main entrance, something in the garden next to the building caught my eye. It forced me to stop and pay attention. It was a jumble of painted, colorful stones. I thought, “oh, how sweet.” But then I saw the stone in the back – it read;

In Loving Memory of

Sam Strahan

Bravery & Selflessness

My breath caught in my throat as I realized that Sam Strahan was the boy who was shot that day in 2017 by his fellow student.

I took a deep breath at the front door and pressed the buzzer for entry. I spoke to 100 students in their gym. They sat respectfully on the bleachers. I only had 40 minutes. I mentioned that Monday was the 75^th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Then I launched into Sam and Esther’s story of survival, finishing with their arrival in NY harbor in May of 1949 and a final quick word about my family trip to Poland in 2016. The bell rang its obnoxious ring and my time was up. But I had one more opportunity to speak to students. I met with a subset of the 100, about 25 students, in their classroom on the first floor.

They asked good questions and I did my best to answer. A few parents came and they had wonderful points to contribute. At one point in the discussion someone asked about Sam and Esther’s life in America and how they managed to go on after what happened to them.

I thought – “if there is a moment to raise the issue of the shooting, it’s now.”

So, I discussed being immigrants in NY with, at first, no English and no money and how they suffered from the trauma of what happened to them during the war. I suggested that there are many kinds of trauma and each person’s trauma is different, but very real.   I told them that I knew that they had suffered a tragedy a couple of years ago with the shooting and that I have no doubt that the trauma of that day lives inside of them. I told them that they are free to bring up their feelings or not, as they wish.

I was not surprised when the room fell silent. Their faces fell as their own personal trauma rose to the surface for a few seconds. I could feel the air change in the room. Pia, the teacher, told me later that a few kids in this class had older siblings who had been injured during the shooting, so it was very real for them.

The final question was from a student who asked, “shouldn’t look at both sides, especially about Hitler, because he had such a hard childhood with so much rejection in his life.” I responded that he is right, Hitler had a difficult childhood and was rejected many times. He lived for several years in Vienna and he wanted to be an artist. He was not successful. He was certainly exposed to Jews in Vienna and it is there that he may developed his intense hatred of Jews.

[here is a short article from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about Hitler’s early years:

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/adolf-hitler-early-years-1889-1913]

I told the class that Hitler found his “voice” and calling as a political speaker, not as an artist. When, in 1923 he attempted a coup against the German government, he was arrested and put in jail. It was there, at the age of 34, he wrote Mein Kampf, and set down his Jew hatred in writing and set the course for his political career. I suggested that today we need to try hard not to make people feel rejected and outcast, because they may search for meaning down a different path. Hitler’s path of hatred led to a world war and the murder of six million Jews.

The obnoxious bell rang again, and I thanked the students and the teacher for having me to their school. The kids ran out – hungry for lunch.

I thanked Pia for inviting me and got back in the Forester and drove back through the empty landscape of Eastern Washington. I had time to think about the students and the world they find themselves in today. So much has changed since 1923, when Hitler attempted his coup, but so much is the same. We still have much to learn and much work to do.

 

 

Words that Pierce My Heart – 75 years since Liberation of Auschwitz

I first posted Esther Peterseil’s words (2018) in a post on May, 30, 2019. The words pierced my heart then and they still do today as we commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

*****

We are in one the most horrible places on earth.

Here, at Birkenau, hundreds of thousands of Jews, almost one million Jews, were murdered.

Here is where I saw so many of my family, so many of my friends, for the very last time.

Here is where the smoke we saw rising to the sky was all that was left of children, women, and men who never did any harm to anyone, and who were tortured and killed by monsters.

My dear friend Hadassah Rosensaft, Menachem’s mother, said that after our liberation, we survivors were free from the fear of death, but not from the fear of life.

Today I speak not only for myself but for Hadassah, and for all my friends who were with me here at Birkenau, but who are not here anymore.

Hadassah was right. But this fear of life started for us long before the liberation.

Here in Birkenau, we were always afraid – afraid of being cold, afraid of being hungry, afraid of being beaten, afraid of being selected to die, afraid of seeing a member of our family or a friend selected to die. We all wanted desperately to live, but we knew that here tomorrow would not be better than today. We knew that the cold would continue, that the hunger would continue, that the SS and the kapos would continue to beat us. And we knew that many of the Jewish prisoners who were with us today would not be with us tomorrow.

But we also had dreams, even here in Birkenau.

We dreamed of our homes, of our parents, of our brothers and sisters. I dreamed about the life I had before the Germans came to Będzin and destroyed that life. I dreamed about the ghetto which seemed so bad, but was so much better than the hell of Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Auschwitz and Birkenau.

These dreams kept us human. They reminded us that we were better than those who wanted to kill us.

And each one of us also dreamed that the nightmare would end, and that we would be allowed to live again.

We dreamed that we would one day have homes again, and families, and nice clothes, and good food. Those dreams gave us a little hope.

I am here today with my daughter and my grandsons. I dreamed of you, that I would one day have you.

And I want to say to all the children and grandchildren of survivors here today: we all dreamed of you. We did not really believe that our hell would ever end, but we dreamed that it would, and that we would have you.

Here at Birkenau, I give you our memories and our dreams. They are your inheritance. Use them to fight against hatred, against injustice, and to prevent other genocides.

And never forget whose children and grandchildren you are.

*****

What does it mean to be 75 years away from the day the Soviet Army entered the gates of Auschwitz. Most who were survived Auschwitz are no longer alive. We live in their shadow.

These 75 years have been rocky and difficult. At first no one wanted to talk about what happened to the Jews.   It was too painful; too horrific; too hard to believe. But slowly, as time went on, people began to talk, to discuss, to research, to question, to ponder the why and the how. The Eichmann Trials in Jerusalem in 1961 allowed the world a glimpse into the unthinkable and transformed public awareness and public opinion. Since that time, there has been an explosion of publications, movies, Holocaust Centers, memorials, museums – sometimes it is almost overwhelming. But it speaks to our human need to try to understand how this happened and to remember with honor and respect.

What will the next 75 years bring? That is up to us. It is up to us to keep the true facts and survivor’s stories alive. When I speak to groups, especially to students, I feel the weight of this task on my shoulders. Let’s keep the fighting the deniers; let’s keep fighting the hate. Let us stand together for the next 75 years and try to make a world that we want to leave to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

[Photos below:  left: shower head used to gas the victims, found in wreckage of crematoria 2; right: Tzitzit – tallit kattan – hidden by an Auschwitz inmate and made it out of the camp]

Kapo Trials – III

[Photo: Haim Cohn – Wikipedia]

“[I came] to believe that those of us who did not experience the Holocaust ourselves, have no ability or the right to try a person for his actions, intentions and constraints when he [was trapped in] that Hell.” (166) Haim Cohn

These words were uttered by Haim Cohn years after he began prosecuting Jewish functionaries as Israel’s Attorney General. In the early 1950’s, after the Nazi and Nazi Collaborator Law was passed, Cohn relentlessly pursued Jewish functionaries. The first fifteen indictments brought by the Attorney General averaged ten counts and they included multiple counts of crimes against humanity, whose punishment was death. “In their totality,” Dan Porat, in his book Bitter Reckoning, concludes, “the collection of indictments seemed to be asserting that these Jewish functionaries were partners to the Nazis in their war against the Jews.” (86)

After years of trials and prosecutions, even Haim Cohen, began to soften. The years between 1958 and 1962 saw a further shift in public opinion towards Jewish functionaries in Nazi-controlled Europe. In this third stage, Jewish functionaries were viewed more often as victims of the Nazis who tried their best in an impossible situation. This shift was in part due to the “Kastner trial” in 1954 and the Eichmann trial in 1961.

*****

[Photo:  Rudolf Kastner – Wikipedia]

In 1954 there was a trial that became known as the “Kastner trial.” In this trial, the State prosecutor (Haim Cohn) brought suit for libel against Malkiel Gruenwald. Gruenwald claimed that Rudolf Kastner, one of the heads of the Rescue Committee in Budapest Hungary, knew of the Nazi plan to “relocate” the Jews of Hungary to Auschwitz, but did not tell the 500,000 Jews that this was their destination as they boarded the trains in 1944. Gruenwald claimed that Kastner didn’t tell in order to save his own family and friends in a “blood for goods” deal he negotiated with Eichmann.

But at the trial, Gruenwald’s attorney, Shmuel Tamir, turned the tables and put Kastner on trial, showing that as a leader of the Hungarian Jewish community, he knowingly collaborated with the Nazis and sent the Jews to their death to benefit himself and his friends. Tamir stated that Kastner was “an agent of the Nazi gang” and was “their confidant, their ally, one of them.” (161)

Attorney General Cohn, the prosecutor of the libel action against Gruenwald, now found himself defending a Jewish functionary. He argued that Kastner only wished to “serve his people.” (159) Cohen argued that “Kastner should be viewed not as someone who had saved 1,685 relatives and friends at the expense of half a million others, but rather as one who had saved 1,685 people from among half a million doomed men and women.” (160) “We are unable to judge,” Cohen stated emphatically, “this is a matter between them and heaven.” (160) Here – one of the most powerful legal voices in Israel changed his tune. Jewish functionaries were no longer “guilty until proven innocent.” The new mantra was “who are we to judge?” This was a radical shift.

After nine months of deliberation, in October of 1955, Judge Halevi issued his 274-page ruling in the Kastner trial. “What caused the Jews of Hungary to board the trains obediently and not resist?” Judge Halevi asked. “It was their ignorance about the destiny of their trip, an absence of knowledge that Kastner could have remedied but failed to do. Had Kastner informed Hungary’s Jews, the judge continued, they would have either escaped or resisted.” (161) Kastner had “sold his soul to the devil.” The judge cleared Gruenwald of the libel charges in all but one minor issue. (162)

In January of 1958, the Supreme Court of Israel reversed the lower court ruling. Focusing on Kastner’s motivation, four of the five Justices cleared Kastner of the allegations of collaboration with the Nazis. “Even if a person knew that some of his actions would benefit the Nazis but his overall motivation was morally justified,” the court wrote, “one could not label him a collaborator. Kastner had clearly acted with the larger motivation of saving the Jews of Hungary.” (165) Rather than being in bed with the devil, this court saw Kastner’s actions in saving Jews as “miraculous.”

But there is a desperately sad end to this story – while Kastner was awaiting the Supreme Court ruling, he was murdered outside his Tel Aviv apartment.   He was shot on March 4, 1957 by members of a “right-wing underground cell that aimed to reestablish the Kingdom of Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River.” (165) The three men were tried and sentenced to life in prison. All three were released from prison after five years.

After the Kastner trial, Prosecutor Cohn dramatically reduced the number of cases he brought against Jewish functionaries. He was a changed man.

Another turning point was the Eichmann trial in 1961. Among other things, the Eichmann trial served to bring to light the difficult choices that had to be made by Jewish functionaries and further soften public opinion against them. “One of the goals of the Eichmann’s prosecutor,” Porat explains, “was to remove the charge of collaboration from kapos and policemen. In his selection of witnesses for the Eichmann trial, he portrayed functionaries as harmless and in some instances even heroic.” (6)

With these transitionary trials – Kastner and Eichmann – the stage was set for the second to last kapo trial – the trial of Hirsch Barenblat in 1963. Barenblat was accused of being a Jewish Police and delivering Jews to the enemy and of rounding up and arresting dozens of orphaned children and handing them over to the Gestapo in Bezdin. The Court found him guilty and sentenced him to five years in prison. (203)

The Supreme Court overturned this verdict. The language below shows how the Israeli mind set had changed:

“And it is also the bitterest truth that ‘in the atmosphere of [the] extraordinary pressure of those days, moral concepts and values changed.’ But it would be hypocritical and arrogant on our part – on the part of those who never stood in their place and on the part of those who succeeded in escaping from there, like the prosecution witnesses – to make this truth a cause for criticizing those ‘little men’ who did not rise to the heights of moral supremacy when mercilessly oppressed by a regime whose first aim was to remove the human image from their faces. And we are not permitted to interpret the elements of the special offenses defined in the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, 1950, by some standard of moral conduct only few are capable of attaining. One cannot impute to the legislator an intention to demand a level of conduct that the community cannot sustain, especially as we are dealing with ex post facto laws. Nor should we deceive ourselves in thinking that the oppressive weight of the terrible blow our nation suffered would be lifted were the acts committed there by our persecuted brethren judged according to the standards of our morality.” (208)

So, where does that leave us?

I say, it leaves us confused. These functionaries – the Judenrat, the Jewish Police, kapos – had power over the disenfranchised, persecuted Jews. But they too were disenfranchised, persecuted Jews. In the end, most of those who had these privileged positions died like the rest. Some were evil – for sure. Some did evil things but did it in order to help others. Some were truly righteous. Some functionaries survived, maybe even because of their position. But what would I have done if I had the opportunity to take one of these positions if it meant I might be able to live another day or save my family? I don’t know and I hope I never have to find out.

Porat concludes his admirable book with his “where does that leave us?” idea: “Considering [Jewish functionaries] . . . has the potential to complicate our understanding of our existence. While we cannot judge them, we must deliberate on their dilemmas in order to deepen our own humanity.” (219)

Amen.

Kapo Trials – Part II

[Photo: Oberkapo armband – Wikipedia]

• Joseph Paal – found guilty of hanging inmates from the barracks ceiling by their hands for ten to twenty minutes at a time and of beating prisoners until they bled.
• Mordecai Friedman – found guilty of beating inmates who were slow in carrying out their jobs.
• Miriam Goldberg – found guilty of pouring soup on an inmate who during food distribution asked for another potato.
• Elsa Trenk – found guilty of nine instances of striking inmates and ordering individuals to kneel on the ground or pavement for extended periods of time.

These were some of the first verdicts handed down in the trials, which became known as “the kapo trials.” Dan Porat, in his new book, Bitter Reckoning: Israel Tries Holocaust Survivors As Nazi Collaborators, describes three distinct phases of Israel’s kapo trials. In this first, most harsh phase, (August 1950-January 1952), these Jewish functionaries (kapos, members of the Judenrat or Jewish Police) were treated harshly. Prosecutors viewed them as “guilty until proven innocent.” (4) They were treated, by the justice system, on equal footing with actual Nazis. Prosecutors were relentless in adding count after count of alleged crimes to bring before the court. Judges heard the cases and meted out punishments. But the sentences were more lenient than the prosecution requested.

• Joseph Paal – “For his ‘sadistic’ actions, wrote the Judge, Paal deserved life in prison, but because these actions had occurred under the Nazi regime . . . [he was] sentenced . . . to ten years, reduced later by the Supreme Court to five years.” (114)
• Mordecai Friedman – panel of three judges gave him three years in prison. (114)
• Miriam Goldberg – sentenced to ten months in prison but allowed the ten months she had already served in detention awaiting trial to count as time served. The Judge stated “that none of your ‘actions showed that you identified yourself with the Germans. . . and I have no doubt that you are not and you were not wicked . . . I have no doubt that your actions resulted due to the concurrent circumstances of anger [and] disturbances from both sides,’ meaning both supervisors and subordinates.   (114)
• Elsa Trenk – sentenced to two years imprisonment, with credit for time served awaiting trial. The Prosecutors had charged Trenk with Crimes Against Humanity (requiring the death penalty) and War Crimes. The Court, however, did not convict Trenk of either these crimes. “The judges determined Israeli law required that for an offense to be considered a war crime it must be a serious one, such as ‘murder, ill-treatment or deportation to forced labour [sic] or for any other purpose, of civilian population of or in occupied territory.’ Trenk had not been found guilty of any serious crimes.” (117-118)

So although the Israeli public, especially the survivor population, wanted revenge and took harsh positions against these Jewish “traitors,” the judges softened the blow, admitting that these Jewish defendants were in a situation that they, having not been there, could not judge based on norms of a democratic society.

A turning point in these cases came with the conviction of Yehezkel Jungster in 1951. Survivors testified that Jungster was a “malicious kapo.” (130) “Already on my first day at work,” testified Yehuda Holtzman, “the defendant punched me and broke two of my teeth.” (130) “[I]f a person did not jump from his bed with the required speed,” David Levkovitch, another survivor explained, “he struck him with his stick. If he found a bed not made exactly as it should be, he would hit him with his stick. . . If he found a pair of shoes not lined up precisely – he would strike.” (130)

The judges in the Jungster case found that the defendant had beat and harmed fellow Jews in the camp, but they dismissed the counts of war crimes, stating: “one cannot convict a person for a war crime when both he and his victims are members of the same persecuted people.” (139)

This rational, however, did not extend to the counts of Crimes Against Humanity.  Two of the three judges on the panel in the Jungster trial stated that to rise to a Crime Against Humanity, the “action has to be of a sever nature that might make a person miserable, humiliate him, and inflict on him grave physical or mental torments,’ and ‘the action must be committed against civilians in a wide-scale and systematic manner . . [and] in a way that arouses a revolt of conscience and of human emotions.” (140)  Jungster’s actions, they determined met this threshold. His acts were against individuals, but “had been committed on a wide scale” that they were crimes against humanity. “The defendant had allowed himself to be used as a tool in the hands of the barbaric Nazi regime,” the majority opinion held, “[to carry out] its pan to annihilate the Jewish people, and because his actions took place under the Nazi regime in an enemy country, he committed a crime against humanity as defined in the first paragraph of the [Nazi and Nazi Collaborator] law.”(140)

One of the three judges dissented on this point. Judge Joseph Lam, who himself survived Dachau, wrote that the conditions needed for a Crime Against Humanity were not met here. Jungster did not aim to annihilate the Jewish population nor did he commit “inhumane actions.” (140)

Because of the way the Nazi and Nazi Collaborator Law was written, the Judges determined that they had no choice but to impose the death penalty on Jungster. To them, the law stated clearly that if a person was found guilty of Crimes Against Humanity, he or she must be put to death.  This outcome gave the zealot prosecutors pause and they realized that this was an unjust result. The prosecutors then instituted a new “rule:” Jewish functionaries would not be charged with Crimes Against Humanity. (142)

In the end, the Supreme Court reversed the finding against Jungster related to Crimes Against Humanity and the death sentence was abated, but they let stand the finding on assault, with a two-year prison term. Jungster did not live to the end of the two-years. His health deteriorated in prison and he died on July 10, 1952.

The Jungster trial’s outcome – death penalty for a Jewish functionary – made people realize that they could not judge these survivors in this harsh – “guilty until proven innocent” – way.  The next phase of the kapo trials (February 1952-1957) sees a change of attitude – a bit more of – “who are we to judge?” After the Jungster trial, the editor of Yediyot Acharanot stated: “To judge here those who were there – and precisely by our common laws, that are normal here according to our everyday logic – that is difficult!”(148) Although there was definitely some softening of public and legal opinion towards Jewish functionaries, the “kapo trials” continued.

The next phase of the “kapo trials” saw further changes and a shift in public opinion against Jews who “collaborated” with the Nazis. Stay tuned.

Kapo, Judenrat, Jewish Police – It’s Complicated

Kapo, Judenrat, Jewish Police – what comes up for you when you hear these words?

I feel anger and disgust. Then, almost immediately, I feel terrible about my anger and tell myself that the Holocaust was not normal times. I can’t judge kapos, or members of the Judenrat or Jewish Police.  I never stood in their shoes. Then, I am just confused.

You may recall the story Sam told about meeting a Treblinka kapo when he and Esther went on vacation to Grossingers. Click here for that post from 2016.

But now, a much more serious look at what happened to these “Jewish functionaries,” has been published by Dan Porat. His new book – Bitter Reckoning: Israel Tries Holocaust Survivors as Nazi Collaborators – tells of the post-war world that survivors inhabited.

In the next few blog posts, I’ll share some of what I have learned.

*****

After the war, survivors returned to their homes or made their way to a Displaced Persons’ (DP) Camp. It was not uncommon to be walking on the street and see someone who served as a member of the Judenrat or worked as a kapo. On these occasions, the survivor’s rage and desire for vengeance flared.   Some took matters into their own hands, attacking, beating, or even killing the former Jewish functionary.

Porat tells of an instance in early 1946, when David Ben-Gurion, who was then the head of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, visited a DP Camp in Germany. At a gathering, a survivor rose to give a speech welcoming Ben Gurion. “At the sight of this survivor,” Ben-Gurion later recounted, “three members of the audience leapt up and cried, ‘Scoundrel! Kapo! You were with the Nazis!’   ‘Their eyes were on fire; they wanted to murder someone,’ Ben Gurion reported to the board of directors at the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem.” (15)

Honor Courts were set up in the DP Camps, to examine “accusations of collaboration during the war,” (19) as well as daily disputes. The Judges and lawyers in this Court were all survivors. Punishments meted out against Jewish functionaries included: a reprimand; cut in social benefits in the DP camp; a ban on holding any public position; or banishment and excommunication from the community. (20)

Once, in early 1946 an American Major named Abraham Hyman was in Landsberg DP camp in the American Zone near Munich. He heard a cry “Kapo” pierce the air,” Porat writes. “Within seconds he saw people rush out, surround the accused, and start beating him. The camp police broke up the mob, taking the accused with them and placing him in detention.”

There was a trial a few months later. Survivors testified that this kapo had beaten prisoners who were attempting to take potato peels from the garbage in a concentration camp. The defendant explained that he had been trying “to deter them from eating from the garbage and so contracting dysentery.” The Judges gave him a light sentence. But, Porat surmises, “[h]ad survivors taken their own revenge on this alleged collaborator, the chances are that the punishment would have been disproportionate to the crime, as frequently happened in cases of vigilante justice.” (19)

[Photo:  Landsburg DP – 1948 – waiting for the UN vote on the creation of the State of Israel.  Yad Vashem Photo Archive.]

These Honor Courts served a critical function in the DP camps. By providing a space for retribution against Jewish functionaries, people refrained from attacking and murdering them in the street. They “calmed social tensions among survivors,” and created a society that could be “cleansed” of these traitors. (21).

Thousands of survivors made new homes in Palestine and then after 1948, the newly born State of Israel. It wasn’t uncommon that survivors would see each other on the street, in the store, or on the bus. When someone recognized a person who in Europe had been a member of the Jewish Police, the Judenrat or had been a kapo, they often could not help themselves as anger rose in their hearts.

Porat tells a story that occurred in December 1945. It was on a bus in Tel Aviv. A passenger noticed someone who got on the bus.  He realized that he was the head of the Jewish Council in Bezdin. The survivor confronted him on the bus:

“’Are you Haim Mochadsky from Bedzin?’

Silence.   The questioner turned pale and stared screaming in Yiddish, ‘You killed my family! You are responsible for the death of thousands of Jews!’

Other passengers crowded around. One slapped the new commuter’s face; another hit him on the head. Others called for the driver to stop the bus. At the junction of Dizengoff Street and King George Street, the driver pulled the bus over. The man and woman leapt off. Passengers jumped off after them, and the scuffle spilled out into the street. Passerby also joined in. The pack of attackers surrounded the pair and blocked their escape. A policeman approached the scene. Together with passersby he broke through the crowd and pulled the couple away.” (41)

Mr. Mochadsky was taken to the police station and there he admitted that the Nazis had appointed him as the head of Jewish Council’s social department in in Bedzin. In this position he selected those that would go to work camp. Later the Nazi’s promoted him, making him the head of the Judenrat. But in the end, he told his interrogators, he too was sent to Auschwitz. (42)

But until 1950, there was no legal mechanism to arrest and try survivors who had been Jewish functionaries in Europe. In pre-State Palestine, the Jewish Agency was urged to create a system, like the Honor Courts in the DP Camps, that would hear these cases. But the Jewish Agency lacked the authority to create such a court to try collaborators. (55)   Between 1948 and 1950, cases were referred to the World Zionist Congress Honor Court. The State of Israel had no jurisdiction to prosecute alleged Nazi collaborators.

But that all changed on August 1, 1950, when the Knesset passed the Nazi and Nazi Collaborator Law. This law was a retroactive and gave prosecutorial authority over Israeli citizens who “collaborated” with the Nazis in Europe between 1933 and 1945. Two days later, the Knesset passed The Crime of Genocide (Prevention and Punishment) Law. This law “aimed to prevent future ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.’” (74)

Then the arrests began. More later.